“Take heed of Cupid’s tears, if cautious. 
        And of his smiles and kisses I thee tell,
        If that he offer’t, for they be noxious,
        And very poison in his lips doth dwell.”

[5203]A thousand years, as Castilio conceives, “will scarce serve to reckon up those allurements and guiles, that men and women use to deceive one another with.”

SUBSECT.  V.—­Bawds, Philters, Causes.

When all other engines fail, that they can proceed no farther of themselves, their last refuge is to fly to bawds, panders, magical philters, and receipts; rather than fail, to the devil himself. Flectere si nequeunt superos, Acheronta movebunt.  And by those indirect means many a man is overcome, and precipitated into this malady, if he take not good heed.  For these bawds, first, they are everywhere so common, and so many, that, as he said of old [5204]Croton, omnes hic aut captantur, aut captant, either inveigle or be inveigled, we may say of most of our cities, there be so many professed, cunning bawds in them.  Besides, bawdry is become an art, or a liberal science, as Lucian calls it; and there be such tricks and subtleties, so many nurses, old women, panders, letter carriers, beggars, physicians, friars, confessors, employed about it, that nullus tradere stilus sufficiat, one saith,

[5205]  ------“trecentis versibus
Suas impuritias traloqui nemo potest.”

Such occult notes, stenography, polygraphy, Nuntius animatus, or magnetical telling of their minds, which [5206]Cabeus the Jesuit, by the way, counts fabulous and false; cunning conveyances in this kind, that neither Juno’s jealousy, nor Danae’s custody, nor Argo’s vigilancy can keep them safe.  ’Tis the last and common refuge to use an assistant, such as that Catanean Philippa was to Joan Queen of Naples, a [5207]bawd’s help, an old woman in the business, as [5208]Myrrha did when she doted on Cyniras, and could not compass her desire, the old jade her nurse was ready at a pinch, dic inquit, opemque me sine ferre tibi—­et in hac mea (pone timorem) Sedulitas erit apta libi, fear it not, if it be possible to be done, I will effect it:  non est mulieri mulier insuperabilis, [5209]Caelestina said, let him or her be never so honest, watched and reserved, ’tis hard but one of these old women will get access:  and scarce shall you find, as [5210]Austin observes, in a nunnery a maid alone, “if she cannot have egress, before her window you shall have an old woman, or some prating gossip, tell her some tales of this clerk, and that monk, describing or commending some young gentleman or other unto her.”  “As I was walking in the street” (saith a good fellow in Petronius) “to see the town served one evening, [5211]I spied an old woman in a corner selling of cabbages and roots” (as our hucksters do plums, apples, and such like fruits); “mother” (quoth he) “can you tell where I can dwell? she, being